Returner controversy? Duties appear up in the air before date with Carolina

After a struggling Kyle Williams was replaced as the 49ers’ kickoff returner in the second half of a 42-10 win over the Jaguars on Oct. 27, Jim Harbaugh told nosy reporters to stop asking questions about the switcheroo.

“We are not going to talk about the controversy of who the returner is,” he said. “There is no returner controversy. If there was a quarterback controversy I could understand talking about that, but I’m not going to talk about a returner controversy.”

This week, however, Harbaugh did nothing to quell the controversy clarify the situation when he declined to say if Williams would retain his punt- and kickoff-return duties against the Panthers on Sunday.

That led a group of nosy reporters to speak with LaMichael James today, wondering if, perhaps, the second-year running back was in line to return kicks against Carolina.

“I could,” James said. “It’s like that every week, though. You just kind of never know. It’s one of those type of deals. When my number’s called, I’ll be ready.”

James has been a healthy scratch the past three games, but Harbaugh strongly suggested last week his inactivity was coming to end, saying he was “too good of a football player to not be playing.”

A logical role for James would be as a kickoff returner, a spot in which he averaged 29.8 yards on 14 runbacks last year. Whether James is ready to handle punt-return duties is unknown.

He struggled mightily in that role during the 2012 preseason and has never returned a punt in a regular-season game. He returned 14 punts – and averaged 9.8 yards a return – in college, but acknowledged the learning curve in the NFL was steep.

“At first it was a little shaky,” he said. “I think never really doing it in college. I did it one year — and never really catching an NFL ball, or studying an NFL punter. … (I was) kind of just freestyling it when I was in college. In the NFL, you’ve to know what you’re doing. You’ve got to study the ball, you’ve got to play the wind. A lot of things that come with it. I had to grow and I had to learn. I feel like I’m well-conditioned for it now.”

So, will he get the opportunity to prove himself this week? James said he doesn’t expect to find out the answer very soon.